Users are currently demanding for a new way to interact and control devices, such as video game consoles, virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR) devices and smart appliances. For example, interactive video games (i.e., the games played by movement) are popular across the world. However, many of the video game players are unsatisfied with the existing tracking technologies in the video games: (i) they often complain about their tracking accuracy, and (ii) the coarse-grained tracking accuracy has also limited the existing interactive games to only sports and dancing games, which require large movement, whereas, many gamers enjoy more fine-grained movement games, such as shooter games.
In addition, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are becoming increasingly popular. One of the major factors that impact its success and potential is the availability of an easy-to-use user interface. The current interfaces of VR/AR are rather constrained (e.g., relying on tapping, swiping, or voice recognition). This significantly limits its potential applications.
Moreover, smart appliances are becoming increasingly popular. For example, smart TVs offer a rich set of controls, and it is important for users to easily control smart TVs. More and more appliances will become smart and can let users control them remotely.
Since mobile devices, such as smartphones and smart watches, are becoming ubiquitous, they can potentially serve as universal controllers. In order to utilize a mobile device as an effective controller, its movement should be tracked very accurately, such as within a centimeter. While significant work has been done on localization and tracking, the existing technologies fall short in achieving: (i) high accuracy (e.g., mm accuracy), (ii) responsiveness (e.g., within tens of milliseconds), (iii) robustness under different environments, (iv) requiring little calibration, and (v) using existing hardware.